Ajax

AJAX (Gr. Aias), a Greek hero, son of Oileus, king of Locris,
called the “lesser” or Locrian Ajax, to distinguish him from Ajax, son
of Telamon. In spite of his small stature, he held his own amongst the
other heroes before Troy; he was brave, next to Achilles in swiftness of
foot and famous for throwing the spear. But he was boastful, arrogant
and quarrelsome; like the Telamonian Ajax, he was the enemy of Odysseus,
and in the end the victim of the vengeance of Athene, who wrecked his
ship on his homeward voyage (Odyssey, iv. 499). A later story gives a
more definite account of the offence of which he was guilty. It is said
that, after the fall of Troy, he dragged Cassandra away by force from
the statue of the goddess at which she had taken refuge as a suppliant,
and even violated her (Lycophron, 360, Quintus Smyrnaeus xiii. 422).
For this, his ship was wrecked in a storm on the coast of Euboea, and he
himself was struck by lightning (Virgil, Aen. i. 40). He was said to
have lived after his death in the island of Leuke. He was worshipped as
a national hero by the Opuntian Locrians (on whose coins he appears),
who always left a vacant place for him in the ranks of their army when
drawn up in battle array. He was the subject of a lost tragedy by
Sophocles. The rape of Cassandra by Ajax was frequently represented in
Greek works of art, for instance on the chest of Cypselus described by
Pausanias (v. 17) and in extant works.

Also AJAX, son Of Telamon, king of Cyprus, a
legendary hero of ancient Greece. To distinguish him from Ajax, son of
Oileus, he was called the “great” or Telamonian Ajax. In Homer’s Iliad
he is described as of great stature and colossal frame, second only to
Achilles in strength and bravery, and the “bulwark of the Achaeans.’, He
engaged Hector in single combat and, with the aid of Athene, rescued the
body of Achilles from the hands of the Trojans. In the competition
between him and Odysseus for the armour of Achilles, Agamemnon, at the
instigation of Athene, awarded the prize to Odysseus. This so enraged
AJax that it caused his death (Odyssey, xi. 541). According to a later
and more definite story, his disappointment drove him mad; he rushed out
of his tent and fell upon the flocks of sheep in the camp under the
impression that they were the enemy on coming to his senses, he slew
himself with the sword which he had received as a present from Hector.
This is the account of his death given in the Ajax of Sophocles (Pindar,
Nemea, 7; Ovid, Met. xiii. 1). From his blood sprang a red flower, as at
the death of Hyacinthus, which bore on its leaves the initial letters of
his name AI, also expressive of lament (Pausanias i. 35. 4). His ashes
were deposited in a golden urn on the Rhoetean promontory at the
entrance of the Hellespont. Like Achilles; he is represented as living
after his death in the island of Leuke at the mouth of the Danube
(Pausanias iii. 19. 11). Ajax, who in the post-Homeric legend is
described as the grandson of Aeacus and the great-grandson of Zeus, was
the tutelary hero of the island of.Salamis, where he had a temple and an
image, and where a festival called Aianteia was celebrated in his honour
(Pausanias i. 35). At this festival a couch was set up, On which the
panoply of the hero was placed, a practice which recalls the Roman
lectisternium. The identification of Ajax with the family of Aeacus was
chiefly a matter which concerned the Athenians, after Salamis had come
into their possession, on which occasion Solon is said to have inserted
a line in the Iliad (ii. 557 or 558), for the purpose of supporting the
Athenian claim to the island. Ajax then became an Attic hero; he was
worshipped at Athens, where he had a statue in the market-place, and the
tribe Aiantis was called after his name.

Many illustrious Athenians---Cimon, Miltiades,
Alcibiades, the historian Thucydides---traced their descent from Ajax.

See D. Bassi, La Leggenda di Aiace Telamonio
(1890); P. Girard, “Ajax, fils de Telamon,” 1905, in Revue des etudes
grecques, tome 18; J. Vurtheim, De Ajacie Origine, Cultu, Patria
(Leiden, 1907), accord. ing to whom he and Ajax Oileus, as depicted in
epos, were originally one, a Locrian daemon somewhat resembling the
giants. When this spirit put on human form and became known at the
Saronic Gulf, he developed into the “greater” Ajax, while among the
Locrians he remained the “lesser.” In the article GREEK ART fig. 13
(from a black-figured Corinthian vase) represents the suicide of Ajax.